House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee Report on Terminally Ill Adults Bill

The House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has published its second report on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.

The report considers the implications for delegated powers in the Bill following amendments proposed by the Bill’s sponsor in the Lords Lord Falconer of Thoroton.

The report is available online here.

The DPRRC scrutinises proposals in bills to delegate legislative power from Parliament to Ministers or other bodies. Bills will often include clauses delegating the power to make future changes to the law through secondary legislation, limiting the level of scrutiny Parliament can apply to those future changes.

In its reports, the DPRRC draws the attention of the House of Lords to clauses where these delegated legislative powers are proposed and highlights when it believes the proposed delegations to be inappropriate. The Committee does not take a view on the possible merits or disadvantages of any policy or change to the law.

In today’s report the Committee particularly draw the attention of the House to clauses 37 – which deals with substances that could legally be administered to cause death and devices for their administration and clauses 41 and 42 – which provide for the regulation of voluntary assisted dying services in England and Wales.

Proposed delegated powers within these clauses would allow future governments to use regulations to make any provision that could be made by an Act of Parliament without being subject to the Parliamentary scrutiny required of an Act. The Committee says this is ‘highly inappropriate” and the provisions allowing this should be removed from the Bill.

Whilst the report reiterates some concerns made in the Committee’s first report on the bill published in September 2025, the Committee have also welcomed in their new report steps taken by the Sponsor to address other concerns made in the initial report. The Sponsor’s memorandum to the Committee is enclosed in their report as an annex.